


Cloak and Dagger

by Churbooseanon



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drabble Collection, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sickfic, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-07
Updated: 2015-07-07
Packaged: 2018-04-08 05:23:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4292316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Churbooseanon/pseuds/Churbooseanon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Collection of brief one-shots focused on Felix and/or Locus. Any AU, any relationship status, any level of interaction is possible. Check chapter notes for summaries and warnings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Who Are You?

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: "Why are you here?"
> 
> Felix comes back to his partner only to find the world isn't the one he remembers.

The accident doesn’t make any sense. Not a lick of it. All he knows is that after the explosion of the teleportation cube at the same time as the shorting of the sword and the activation of the Pelican’s jets did something. Lots of something. Because he wakes up on the prisoner ship when he was on the planet fighting those stupid reds and blues. Wakes up and frowns because why the fuck is he here. And why the hell he’s in a fucking prison cell.

When he looks up he sees the far too familiar armor of Locus on the other side of the bars, armor more scratched up and damaged than it should have been. Than it was the last time they met. There’s even a pretty serious hole through a shoulder plate. And… is that a small scrap of orange cloth tucked under a gauntlet.

“Who are you, how did you get here, and why are you wearing Felix’s armor?”

Felix stumbles to his feet and grabs the bars. “Very funny, Locus, but I’m not laughing. Let me out.”

The shotgun pointed at his face is a bit… unnerving. “Felix has been dead for five months. Drop the act and maybe I’ll let you live.”


	2. Chicken Nuggets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Request: Locus is sick and Felix tries to help. 
> 
> On the trip to Chorus, Felix finds himself poorly equipped to handle his partner being under the weather.

The thing is… Felix has never had to do this before. He’s got an immune system that’s like… well, something that never gets sick. He didn’t have siblings growing up. People getting sick in the army were bustled over to the medics or just left alone. So when his partner gets sick on their long ride to this Chorus place, Felix doesn’t know what to do. Especially with Locus too feverish to talk straight.

“F-f…” Locus starts to stammer out.

“Yeah, I’m here,” Felix says quickly. He’s been pacing in the room for hours now.

“Food,” Locus groans. “Food.”

“I can get you chicken nuggets. We had them for dinner.” He doesn’t even understand why Locus groans in pain as he dashes out of the room.


	3. Unrequited

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "I thought you loved me."
> 
> Felix assumes his relationship with Locus is far more than it is.

The kiss ends not because they both need to breathe. It ends because Locus thrusts Felix back. It ends with Felix’s arms flailing for balance, and Locus’s eyes narrowed in fury.

“What the hell was that?” Locus demands with a fire in his voice that Felix isn’t used to.

“I… I just thought…”

“Don’t think,” Locus snarls, turning and walking away.

Felix is left standing, frowning after his partner. He… he thought that they were in love. Apparently he couldn’t read Locus as well as he thought.


	4. Hole In Your Mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Starlight Challenge Prompt 6/22/2015: Sir, I don't think the memory wipe was complete successful. 
> 
> Locus knows there are faults in his memory, there are holes. He couldn't have just been part of Project Freelancer. He thinks he really was.

There are… holes in his mind. No. Perhaps that is not the proper word to use for the situation. Because there is something in the back of his head that said if he laid out everything he remembered on a calendar, he could perfectly account for the years of his military service from his enlisting to his honorable discharge. Every last day accounted for in that hazy sort of way interspersed with intensely detailed experiences that stick in the mind like a burr. Cling until they are all that fills his head while he sleeps. 

And yet… 

There is a ship in his dreams. A ship and so many people. He remembers a blur of technicolor armor that is not suitable for a battle field. Remembers himself in olive green, head to toe. Remembers a codename that he is certain he never had and never would have. But really, after a name like Montana, is it so strange to think he’d attach himself to Locus as well? 

Felix, of course, never believes. Why should he? To Felix people exist from the moment he meets them, and cease to do so when they are gone. Well, Locus expects that Felix remembers them if he’s responsible for their deaths, but that is how Felix gets through a lot of things. Reminding himself how powerful he is and how powerless everyone else could be. But Felix exists in the now, and the here and the hole in Locus’s mind isn’t either of those. 

There are holes in his mind. Holes plastered over with putty of other memories, a certainty of being in two difference places at one time. A battle on some besieged planet at the same time he was on an orbital station, clad in green, radioing in for pick up after taking out an Insurrectionist supply depot. Down time with his squad after losing their CO while he trains in a state of the art facility with the voice of a kind, gentle woman prompting him on. The eyes of Sangheili staring at him across a battlefield while a disapproving and haughty CO stares down from an observation room as he tries to squeeze just a few more points of rating on his sniper rifle out, trying to prove he’s cut for the A-Squad. 

Control sends them a massive information upload when the target ship is inbound. About the tech on board, about the items and bodies that are priority one retrievals even in the middle of the genocide they are meant to engineer. That level of destruction has felt… strangely familiar to him since it started. The taking orders from a shadowy, questionable voice high above him and far away seems common practice. And the files themselves? 

There are gaps, of course. Control only ever tells them what they need to know. How to identify the right bodies. How to recover an AI fragment for safe delivery. Where to deliver the Freelancer tech for the scientists to work on harnessing the potential of. It isn’t until someone starts messing with their covert operations that the personnel files on the people on the ship are sent over, each one highly redacted. There are no tidbits that explain anything beyond general combat abilities, because Control doesn’t know who it is. 

It isn’t until the box canyon and the discovery of the Reds, Blues and Agent Washington that the full files are unlocked. The secrets of Project Freelancer laid more or less bare before him. And even then, it’s only the senior operatives and general information. No one lower than the top ten. No Agent Montana. 

There are holes in his mind. The more Locus picks through the records of Project Freelancer, the more certain of it he is. There is a voice in his nightmares, darkness all around him, that says something over and over. 

_Sir, I don’t… memo… ompletely successful._

A nightmare of pain in the back of his head and hands shaking as they claw at armrests. Wrists bound, ankles anchored, unable or unwilling to move. Screams bubbling up through his throat and never breaking his lips. And darkness, so much darkness where there should be color and laughter and idiocy. 

Kentucky used to make jokes about how their armor made them giant targets, or so he thinks. Vermont had a giggle that made Felix’s evil laughter sound tame. Jersey had a strange fondness for breaking into the kitchen at odd hours to bake, which had made him a fond favorite of the Alpha team. But none of that is real. They tell him, his mind tells him, his service record tells him that none of it is real. Ever was. Ever would be. That he’s not good enough, was never good enough, could never be good enough for Project Freelancer. 

And the second the dark-skinned man steps onto the bridge of the prison ship, months and months and months after Locus has torn through every file he could get his hands on, he knows. 

There are holes in his mind. 

When this is over and they no longer have need of the man, Aiden Price is going to fill them back in. Even if Locus has to carve every last secret out of his flesh.


End file.
